PRIVATE HARRY WILFRED PAYNE
AUSTRALIAN INFANTRY
15TH APRIL 1916 AGE 22
BURIED: ERQUINGHEM-LYS CHURCHYARD EXTENSION, FRANCE
This inscription, which appears in Trefor Jones' On Fame's Eternal Hunting Ground, has a ring of Kipling's famous epitaph:
I could not look on death, which being known,
Men led me to him, blindfold and alone.
Harry Payne was a volunteer - My life I gave for my country's good - but who were the "they" who took his life from him "where I stood?" Was he bound to a post and executed? As it happens, the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau has the answer. Payne's family wrote to enquire about the circumstances of his death and the Bureau learnt from a witness, Private A Wolland, that:
"There was a lull in our fighting at the time and Payne was looking over the parapet pointing out something in the German lines to a comrade. While his head was exposed he was struck by a rifle bullet from a German sniper. He was wearing a steel helmet but the bullet went right through ... he was removed to a dressing station in the rear of our lines, but died on the way there."
Few families knew the exact circumstances of their relation's death but the Payne's did and reflected it in their son's inscription.